This TL Estate parcel comes from a close friend who wants to LIQUIDATE THE WHOLE PARCEL all at once. However, he leaves the grading, pricing, and sale up to TIBARA. So here are the rules:

1. Pricing shown is for this parcel ro individual lots of opals. PLEASE DO NOT BARTER the prices shown. These prices are already discounted compared to highly discounted WEB prices. We can talk about the parcel, but not on any one lot.

2. If you want a lot as imaged, then add %40 to the price shown. This is what cherry picking costs. Usually, cherry picking costs %100 more.

3. Postage, insurance, and special handling costs will be paid by the customer.

4. Payment will be by credit card,or check precharged just like Amazon, etc. Refunds will be given if the return is unaltered in any way; if they are received within 10 days of mailing; refunds are NOT made for postage, insurance or special handling. Generally no restocking fees will be charged; however, if they are returned not in original order (all messed up), then a 15% charge will be made for our time to reorder the opals for sale—at our discretion.

5. Our terms of sale page gives details. Sorry, but we must be up-front about this because we want to AVOID CONFLICT and keep everyone happy!

Lightning Ridge Trip 2013

We are back home after our Oz trip. We visited Sydney, Melbourne, and Cairns, but the majority of our time was spent doing business and mining in Lightning Ridge and in boulder opal country, Quilpie.

Some of the mining areas we visited at Lightning Ridge were: The Coochran, Dead Bird Mulga’s Rush, Carters Rushes, the Lightning Ridge proper mining area, the thriving metropolis of Cumborah, the Grawin, Sheepyards, Glengarry, and Wyoming, etc. We saw the “Pub in the Scrub,” just down from Ray and Judy’s Store, and best of all, the Bowling Club at the Ridge. Opal mining is hard work; we went underground — 70 feet no less — to see it for ourselves and learned just how expensive it is to mine opal.Another highlight was a visit with LenCram, the famed author of several books on opal; saw much of his latest book — and saw how he makes opal. The final secret of this process, he said, will be released posthumously. He’s a great guy; it was a very interesting visit. We have volume II of his books . Currently, we stock his Commemorative on Lightning Ridge and hisBeautiful Opal books.

On the road we saw “millions” of kangaroos, evidently none too bright, as they seem to just jump out in front of cars. We noted that outback vehicles were equipped with “roo-bumpers” (ourword).

We drove nine hours from Lightning Ridge to see the oldest, largest, and most profitable mine in Australia near Quilpie. Unfortunately we were too early for the Quilpie Boulder Opal Festival, but saw all of Quilpie, which has two streets and two motels — really big! The next morning we drove another fourteen and a half hours to Sydney.

As we travelled from city to city, we learned that in the Australian opal market: 75 percent of opal shown is boulder opal, 20 percent, Lightning Ridge black opal, and about 5 percent is the crystal and white base opal. That is the reverse of the numbers in the USA and I explain why there is such ignorance about boulder and black opal here. About all we see here is crystal and white base opal. Looks like the USA is behind the rest of the opal-loving world.

We spent a great deal of time in OZ negotiating a contract that promises to produce a first for opal lovers in the USA. We can’t say more now, but if all goes according to plan, we will make an announcement around Tucson show time (February 2014).